Mostly About Organized Crime

10/21/2009

Former Gambino soldier Joseph "Little Joey" D'Angelo testified "that Gotti approached him in jail in late 2004 and urged breaking the traditional taboo on admitting the mob's existence in order to fight a racketeering indictment the two men faced" as reported by John Riley for Newsday:

"John said the usual way of us fighting cases is over," D'Angelo told jurors in federal court in Manhattan. Instead, Gotti proposed one of them taking the stand "to say, 'I'm a member of a family, but I've been in jail for years, what have I done?'" Gotti assured him that Gambino family elders and Vincent Basciano, the head of the Bonanno family, among others, had blessed the new approach, and said he could just lie about any criminal activity he was asked about, D'Angelo testified. But D'Angelo, who became an informant in 2005, concluded that the tactic might be tolerated for a bigwig like Gotti, but not for him. * * * Basciano, who prosecutors say was in the federal lockup in Manhattan at the same time as Gotti in 2004, has also advanced a withdrawal defense in court. Gotti, D'Angelo testified, said Basciano told him in 2004, "I'm following your lead."

Federal prosecutors today "also introduced new audio evidence to try to prove that Gotti was still trying to collect a loan-sharking debt years after his alleged withdrawal from the mob, and within five years of his 2008 indictment":

In an August 2003 recorded conversation with his sister Angel at Raybrook federal prison, Gotti tells her that his cousin Peter Gotti owes him $20,000. Then, in a 2007 conversation an informant recorded with the cousin, Peter complains about Gotti's refusal to forgive the loan, and about pressure from Gotti's brother, also named Peter. "He didn't do nothing for me," the cousin complains on the recording. "So then he starts sending Peter. . . . Peter says he's gonna, he's gonna beat up my friends if I don't do the right thing."

If you would like to support this blog please consider purchasing a copy of The Mafia and the Gays by Phillip Crawford Jr. Thank you!

10/14/2009

Federal prosecutors today played "a tape-recorded 1994 jailhouse conversation" between John Gotti and his boy Junior in which the latter "called an effort he allegedly masterminded to derail a federal jury-tampering investigation an 'ingenious move'" as reported by John Riley for Newsday:

Gotti, according to earlier testimony from former lieutenant John Alite, set up a plan to identify and compromise jurors in the 1989 heroin trafficking trial of his uncle Gene Gotti, and then stymied a federal probe by having brother-in-law Carmine Agnello take responsibility after Agnello got an immunity grant from a grand jury. His father, Gambino boss John J. Gotti, imprisoned in 1994 in Marion, Ill., was skeptical - at least on tape. He told his son he hadn't known about the plan in advance and didn't like the idea of family members talking to a grand jury under any circumstances. "If there was a church I robbed and I had the steeple sticking out of my --, I wouldn't say nothin,' " Gotti told his son on the tape played in federal court in Manhattan. The younger Gotti said it had stopped prosecutors in their tracks. "From what I was told, it was a very ingenious move," he told his father. ". . . I was told by all the lawyers, all the lawyers involved, it was a very ingenious move." His father praised him: "Well then, whoever done it should get stripes or somethin.'"

Also today, defense lawyers cross-examined Michael Finnerty, a former member of Junior's crew, who testified that although he made "tribute payments" until 2004 he did not have personal knowledge whether the mob scion ever received the cash. Alison Gendar and Larry Mcshane from the Daily News report:

Prosecution witness Michael Finnerty had testified that he made a $5,000 payoff to Junior on Christmas Eve 2004, five years after Gotti claims that he'd quit the Mafia. Under cross-examination, the government informant said his payments to Gotti were always delivered through middle men - including one associate known as a degenerate gambler. "Have you ever given Mr. Gotti any sum of money?" asked defense attorney Charles Carnesi. "No, I have not," Finnerty replied in his second day of testimony at Gotti's federal racketeering trial. "That's not the way it works."

09/27/2009

Last night on 48 Hours Mystery Victoria Gotti and her siblings told their stories of growing up with John Gotti as a father. There's no news made by the interviews; however, what struck this blog was how casually the men in Victoria's life lied to or otherwise held back on her about their involvement with the mob, and how creeping reality exposed the truth. Transcript

Meanwhile, the New York Post today reprints the first of four excerpts from Victoria's new book This Family of Mine. Mobsters invariably wind up either dead or in prison, and yet rarely discussed is the emotional impact their criminal lives have on their spouses and children. At the end of the 48 Hours Mystery episode Victoria Gotti asks "what was this all for?"

If you would like to support this blog please consider purchasing a copy of The Mafia and the Gays by Phillip Crawford Jr. Thank you!